Apr 24, 2004

East Bay (Oakland CA area) residents are seek relief from
Train horns.
The article has good discussion on many relevent issues, including residencts
not being informed about the trains before buying the homes, and safety issues.
It’s also interesting to see an on-the-record comment by a Union Pacific
representative support the use of wayside horns.

A related article
from the Christian Science Monitor also discusses some of the
same issues. Les Blomberg from the
Noise Pollution Clearinghouse
states: “The FRA did not study whether more train-horn noise
would actually cause more deaths by creating fatigued drivers”

Apr 07, 2004

Everyone is talking about the Time Magazine article
“Just Too Loud.”
There is some good discussion about the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control,
and the economics of noise control. However, I do wish that the press would
get into the habit of publishing source-receiver distances when they quote
sound levels.

Apr 05, 2004

In response to my
April 3rd posting,
a Basslister
pointed out the Grateful Dead’s
“Wall of Sound”
an array of speakers placed behind the musicians that (similar to Bose’s system)
performs as both PA and monitor.

Apr 03, 2004

A few months ago, I commented on Bose’s new
Personalized Amplification System.
Yesterday I attended a GBC-ASA meeting at Bose’s headquarters
in Framingham, where a senior product manager explained the speaker
development process and some of its features. The presentation was followed by
a live performance by a seven-piece blues band using the system.

The talk was interesting, if not technical (anyone who has ever
been to a Bose presentation knows they tend to be geared toward marketing).
The speaker talked about the history of live music amplification,
and some of the problems that have cropped up. Eventually, the state-of-the-art
for live music amplification came down to what Bose dubs the
“Triple System”: backline speakers, stage monitors, and
PA speakers.

Unfortunately, this system means that artists on stage and audience members
generally hear different mixes. This makes it much tougher for the band
to play off each other, or to adjust their own performance for the crowd.
Furthermore, the directional characteristics of the monitor and backline
speakers can make it difficult for band members to hear themselves on their
monitors. To compensate, a band member might turn up her monitor.
The next band member can’t hear his monitor, so he turns it up, and so on.
Now the sound man in the audience has to turn up the PA system to compensate
for reflections from the monitors, and we’re left with the
common problem of the sound mix being too loud.

Bose decided to attack the problem by using a line source speaker
(they use the term “Cylindrical Radiator”) placed behind the band to
act as monitor, backline, and PA. The narrow vertical directivity of the array,
as well as the 3 dB SPL reduction per doubling of distance means that the
soundfield on stage and in the audience is fairly uniform. The band can
hear themselves at a reasonable volume, while the audience can hear
the mix to which the band is playing.

I have to admit, using line-source speakers in this application is
innovative. Again they key is supplying a uniform sound field, and in that
sense, the speakers do a very good job. Normally you hear the amplified
sound come from the PA speakers mounted at the sides or above the stage.
This means that the sound your hear at a live event comes from a
different location then the band on stage. With the Bose speakers placed behind
each band member, you could actually close your eyes and hear
where each member was standing on stage. This was a first for me
for a live amplified event.

I will say that I was a little disappointed in the
low-end produced by the bass modules (note that Bose doesn’t refer to them
as subwoofers). But overall, I think the speakers represented an
improvement over the typical live sound system.

During the presentation, the speaker implied that Bose invented their
column source speaker. As I’ve mentioned before, line-source speakers have been
around for some time, so they’re nothing new. But using them for live sound
reinforcement is an interesting application (for the record, I
don’t closely follow the sound reinforcement field, so
if this has been done before, please let me know). Now there may actually be an
innovation in the engineering of the speaker - one colleague suggested
that Bose may have applied some sort of electronic or digital time-alignment
to improve the performance of the line array. Hopefully we can get one
of the engineers to a GBC-ASA or BSA meeting to discuss the engineering
behind the speaker.

But in the end this product can help live music sound better, and
that’s a good thing.

You may have seen car commercials touting “Quiet Steel.”
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a
brief article
describing it’s benefits. It looks like the material is using a form
of constrained-layer damping to reduce structure-borne vibration.

Apr 02, 2004

Today’s rant: I’m sitting in my living room trying to watch SW: Attack of the
Clones. I say “trying to watch” because the
Macrovision (no, I’m not linking to them) copy-protection scheme
is distorting the color balance.

No, I haven’t pirated the DVD. I own an extensive collection of Star Wars LD and
DVD’s including the OT “Definitive Trilogy” collection, the Special Edition box
set, and the Episode I & II DVD’s. So why the Macrovision grief?

Well, I don’t own a television with composite or S-Video inputs. Yes,
my TV is old, but it’s a decent set, and works fine. My DVD player only offers
composite video and S-Video outputs. To watch DVD’s on the television, I’ve
routed the DVD player through the VCR (well more specifically through
my Marantz pre-amp, which routes the video through the VCR). The circuit
through the VCR’s composite input and output connections
trips the “Macrovision” feature, and the resulting picture
is unwatchable.

Yes, I know I could buy a new TV, or a composite video/RF converter, but
I shouldn’t have to. I’ve paid for the DVD player. I’ve paid for the DVD.
My TV works just fine, and I don’t want to tie up
another outlet with an RF converter. And people wonder why I miss
laserdiscs.

Old news but interesting: CNN reports that
U.S. troops will be deploying a
“Long Range Acoustic Device”
as a non-lethal device in Iraq. The article talks about potential
hearing damage, but dismisses the concerns. I suppose it’s better
to be deaf then dead, but remember hearing damage is irreversible.